Fox News

Democratic Divide

While all the world is waiting to hear what Dick Cheney might or might not have to say about accidentally shooting a friend over the weekend, a very important thing happened Tuesday in Democratic politics.

A very attractive, young Democratic candidate for U.S. Senate in Ohio named Paul Hackett was dumped by the Democrat Party, and Hackett and the far left are all very, very angry about it.

Hackett is an anti-war, anti-Bush Iraq war veteran. He made a very strong showing in '04 for a U.S. Senate seat in Ohio and decided he was going to run again. He was asked by the Democratic big shots to run again. And he was running.

Then, all of a sudden, the Dem big shots — in this case Senators Chuck Schumer and Harry Reid — decided it was better to back somebody else, an old Ohio political hand named Sherrod Brown. Schumer and Reid told the Iraq war veteran he had to quit the Senate race and run for Congress instead.

Hackett said, "No can do. I already promised several Dem candidates for Congress I wouldn't run and my word is my bond."

The Dem big shots told Hackett, "Break your word. We do it all the time."

Hackett said, "I said it, I meant it, I stand behind it. The answer is no."

So now one of the potential young stars of Dem politics is out in the cold and he's ticked off. Betrayed, double-crossed and ticked.

The blue blogs are going crazy over this. Hackett was the poster boy of the anti-Bush, anti-war left, and he got screwed by his own party. Some of the far left blogs are saying, "See, this is why party unity is bogus. The party eats its own."

You know what? They're right. I don't agree with Hackett politically, but he is the kind of person who is the hope of the Democratic Party and the old lions of the party just made a huge mistake. They created dissention and division in their own ranks. This is how you get young Dems to stay away from the polls.

Conservatives are amused. They used to do this same sort of thing themselves. They learned to avoid this kind of mistake in order to hang together and win.

If you are a Democrat and you were hoping to take away the Congress, this was not a good news day.